Third Sunday of Lent

“But he spoke of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken” (John 2:21-22).

Today’s gospel reading recounts Jesus’ destruction in the temple forecourt, saying "you shall not make my Father’s house a house of trade" (Jn 2:16). Strictly speaking, what the temple traders were doing that day does not violate temple law: it doesn't penetrate the inner sanctified areas of the temple, but remains in the public sphere. For a variety of reasons, the temple trade is necessary to a holy observance of the Passover. Donations and taxes must be paid in temple currency, so money-changers are necessary. Animals for slaughter must be free of blemish, so they are usually purchased at the temple rather than brought from home, which would risk damaging them and rendering them unsuitable for sacrifice.

Jesus knows all this. For the man who came to uphold the law to show this much violent disrespect for the temple must mean something pretty important.

Jesus is establishing himself as the new temple, the new commandment, the new center of faith. After the resurrection, faith will hinge not upon a geographic location but upon a person (not that this stopped the earliest Christians from hanging around the temple, waiting for the Second Coming).

But more than that, Jesus is reminding people that faith and worship must not be allowed to become merely a series of ritual acts and exchanges. You cannot ‘get’ holiness for the price of a pigeon any more than you can ‘earn’ your way into heaven with perfect temple adherence. These are tools given by God to help foster relationship with him, not chains meant to define and constrict true worship to prescribed acts of piety. Zeal for God’s house consumes Jesus (Jn 2:17): it is a faith that lives, that infuses his being, that goes beyond anything man-made – even to death on the Cross.

This Lent, Jesus calls us to a living faith, a faith that bursts the bounds of organized religion rather than being contained by it. Our houses of worship nourish us, they give us strength and allow us to come together to love and praise God in unity. But they are not the totality of our faith. Our Lord promises to rebuild the temple in three days: by his death we are saved, and through his resurrection we are set free to a reality born not of the flesh but of spirit, a reality that cannot be contained.